This hasn't been an issue just because there are no new, workable solutions being offered. every idea being pushed has been tried before. And we know where that road goes. And the destination doesn't match the road signs.

Let me back up a bit from that statement.

There are no new, workable solutions being proposed as gun control.

But our issues are broader than that. We abandoned mental health in the 80-90's. Closed down the asylums, as the disasters they were. But we didn't replace them with something better. If you want to remove guns from those with mental problems, addressing it from the mental health side is easy. Everyone wants to help keep guns and crazy separate. The only resistance the gun lobby would show is making sure the new law isn't step one of a 2 stage process, where step 2 is to label gun owners as crazy, then take their guns. This may sound paranoid, but it matches the history of gun grabbers.

But the problem with that is we aren't very good at mental health. It's an incredibly nuanced, complicated subject. There are already lots of gray areas of rights suspension and interpretation of capability. Nothing that screams "do something, anything!" the way mass shootings do. Add in a party affiliation between gun grabbers and mental health advocates, and I'm not expecting any new progress from here any time, soon.

I imagine there are other avenues to approach this. School reform, so maybe we don't have marginalized angry young men looking for a catastrophe, or fewer, anyway. Maybe others I haven't thought of.

But all the resistance against the "just do SOMETHING" proposals comes from trying it before, and not liking the results.

The kid voted most likely to shoot up the school did just that and it appears a new gemeration is going to bark until they get a bone thrown at them. If their parents won’t or are too ignorant to teach them, I guess they will have to learn the hard way. Those who fail to learn...

Both sides want to stop it from happening. But one side is willing to look at how it works, and conclude that none of the proposed solutions will work, see all of history, and the other just wants to do SOMETHING.

brute believes Trump is actually quite good at abusing the "just do SOMETHING, ANYTHING" crowd. since they are reacting to whatever is on the news cycle, but don't care about efficacy, the proper response is to do pretty much anything at the right time, something that sounds kinda right but will have no actual effect (positive or negative). "something" will have happened, and the reactionary crowd will have forgotten 3 weeks later.

for example, the bump stock ban is such a thing. nobody cares about bump stocks, or even full-auto in general, really. full auto is not a useful tool to any marksman, its only legitimate function is to lay down suppressing fire in combat. it's expensive and inaccurate. hobbyist marksmen and hunters and home defenders don't lay down suppressive fire because they typically don't have to contend with snipers and don't have a squad ready to move while they shoot. thus Trump can let himself be negotiated down from "lift age to 21, ban bump stocks" to "ban bump stocks" by the NRA types, ban something that nobody uses or cares about. then he can claim that he did "SOMETHING, ANYTHING" (which is true) without having to care that it will have zero effect in solving the actual problem or piss off too many gun owners.

I do know the difference between a machine gun and a submachine gun or whatever. However, I don't think it helps the conversation to get bogged down in technical definitions when solving problems(*) because, as you note, it's a very effective way to appear to be doing something while in reality it's doing nothing. However, arguing technicalities violates the principle of charity, so lets leave the technical definitions and diversions to the lawyers and the gun-nerds or nuts. When laymen and lawyers say machine gun they mean anything that's capable of putting out lots of rounds at high rates somewhat far down the range. Whether that's a machine gun, a submachine gun, a bump-stock, or a hundred bolt actions wired together in some Rube Goldberg contraption is a matter for the lawyers.

Accepting this, we also don't have to waste time arguing whether the legal definition of a machine gun (=more than 1 round fired for each trigger pull) also covers bump stocks which technically is one pull=one shot, but in practice is one push=rapid shots. See link below for mechanical details.

(*) If indeed it is a problem. Personally, I don't think it's a problem: See my first post in this thread for why I think so.

Same goes for military/tactical issues. Indeed, squad tactics have changed to a point where the idea is to lay down large amounts of suppressing fire in the general direction of some enemy while the marksmen "figure something out". The weapons are spec'ed for that ... or maybe it's the other way around; that since those are the weapons, these are the tactics that naturally derive. Anyway, the idea of suppressing enemy snipers hiding somewhere in the bushes also works for "suppressing" a field of people standing close together in plain view at a rock-concert a few hundred meters away.

Same point with "assault weapons". The general "end" of an assault weapon (whatever the definition) is a weapon that can consistently hit and keep hitting targets beyond 40 yards because the capacity is high enough. Those are the qualities you'd want if you want to storm a trench our outgun someone with a handgun or a shotgun (important point for home defense(+), police, or SWAT teams). If the weapon can't do that, you'd be stupid to bring it. However, assault capability "means" are not necessary for deer or duck hunting though. OTOH, I think everybody now realizes that quantity beats quality when it comes to people-who-shoot-back killing. There's a reason why law enforcement and military switched from reliable revolvers to pistols.

(+) Not in the city though. Here you'd want rounds that don't affect the nearest 10 blocks down the street. Using a rifle around here (the nearest house is <10ft away on both sides) would fit the Cipolla definition of stupid.

What the gun-grabbers, to borrow RJ's term, are saying is that those ends (putting many lethal rounds into many different people in a short amount of time) should be harder to achieve regardless of what the technical means and definitions of doing so are. This is likely because they rely on police/SWAT to provide those services being close by in urban areas. In rural counties where such services are 20+ minutes away, you might like to provide those services yourself ... just like you might like to provide other services on your own like snow plowing, fire fighting, bear fighting, CPR, or catastrophic bleeding services. This also makes sense.

Therefore, I agree with Trump and so think that this is something that should be solved at the state or more accurately at the county level (to dispense with the rural/urban division which naturally makes sense because distance/density). This way, people can weigh their love of shooting against the risk of the rare mass shooting or just move out if they don't agree with the local politics. A few years ago I actually looked into getting some arms and even had everything picked out (Mossberg500 and Ruger Redhawk---I can give you model numbers too) but ultimately decided that the ROI (risk-adjusted and all) in my (suburban) neighborhood wasn't worth it at all, so I didn't bother acquiring. Around here, the ROI of fleeing and calling the cops at the first sign of trouble >>> standing my ground and dealing with the outcome whether it's the mortuary, the hospital, and/or the courtroom.

PS: For those who don't know how or can't infer how a bump stock works, here's a good vid: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2IOZ-5Nk5k
PPS: The reason why almost all people buy bump stocks is to experience the "yay/wow/fuckin'a"-moment shown at 4:15.

When laymen and lawyers say machine gun they mean anything that's capable of putting out lots of rounds at high rates somewhat far down the range. Whether that's a machine gun, a submachine gun, a bump-stock, or a hundred bolt actions wired together in some Rube Goldberg contraption is a matter for the lawyers.

Accepting this...

brute does not accept. while in a well-intentioned discussion he could give the benefit of the etymological doubt, the anti-gun team has clearly weaponized (haha) misdefinitions to evoke greater emotional responses.

saying "machine gun" instead of "submachine gun", saying "assault rifle" or "semi-automatic rifle" instead of "it's just a fucking rifle, they're all semi-automatic" repeatedly, especially if the true difference is known to the speaker, can only be considered a deliberate attempt at misdirection or scaring humans who don't know better.

brute could argue about the technical points Dear Leader jacob is wrong about with regards to the assaultness of assault rifles, revolvers, and pistols, but he won't, because that's not the point.

the point is that the point in this discussion where one side can assume good intentions upon incorrect usage of a definition is long past. saying "machine gun" or "assault rifle" is like saying "pro-life" - it's not an innocent word, it's politically motivated, and therefore has to be pointed out.

edit:

brute just realized that, of course, not all rifles are semi-automatic. there are plenty of bolt-action rifles out there, and some lever-action rifles. but, pretty much all pistols and revolvers these days are semi-automatic. so it's really not such a useful term to distinguish what should be banned, it just sounds scary.

I have to agree with BRUTE, about the political points, and Jacob about how little terms matter. So to me, whether it is an innocent mistake, or is one more way to manipulate the public, has everything to do with the knowledge level of the speaker. If you don't know anything about guns, I don't care what words you use, I don't have an expectation that you should understand the terms you use.

But if one is actively endorsing a policy, and consistently use the wrong terms, in consistent ways, that's not a mistake.

It occurs to me that I have spouted off about the statistics, but provided no links to backup what I am saying.

Honestly, while I call myself a gun nut, other than moving them around, I haven't touched a gun in a few years. I haven't looked into any of this since before Sandy Hook. And since I'm posting from my phone, I didn't have any of my links saved. Just as well, half are dead now... but in looking, I found this just facts site.

And they are a gun rights site, but they do a very good job of citing sources, and putting in notes. I dug through it last night, and the only flaw I spotted was they talked about some surveys done in the 90's that weren't as unambiguous as they are presented. Also, it seems I was wrong about the CDC and federal research. There has been lots that I didn't look into recently. The site refers to some of it. I'll dig around and see what the CDC had to say, and compare that to what just facts reports for a feeling of how much spin is there.

This is a great site for general overview of gun rights/control stats:

* Under federal law:
It is illegal and punishable by up to 10 years in prison for the following people to receive, possess, or transport any firearm or ammunition:
someone convicted of or under indictment for a felony punishable by more than one year in prison, someone convicted of a misdemeanor punishable by more than two years in prison, a fugitive from justice, an unlawful user of any controlled substance, someone who has been ruled as mentally defective or has been committed to any mental institution, an illegal alien, someone dishonorably discharged from the military, someone who has renounced his or her U.S. citizenship, someone subject to certain restraining orders, or someone convicted of a domestic violence misdemeanor.[77] [78] [79] [80]
It is illegal and punishable by up to 10 years in prison to sell or transfer any firearm or ammunition to someone while “knowing” or having “reasonable cause to believe” this person falls into any of the prohibited categories listed above.[81] [82]
It is illegal to “engage in the business of importing, manufacturing, or dealing in firearms” without a federal license to do so.[83] [84] [85]
It is illegal for any federally licensed firearms business to sell or transfer any firearm without first conducting a background check to see if the buyer/recipient falls into any of the prohibited categories listed above.[86] [87]
It is illegal for anyone except a federally licensed firearms business to sell, buy, trade, or transfer a firearm across state lines.[88]
* Under federal law, private individuals are not required to a conduct a background check before selling or transferring a firearm to someone who lives in the same state, but it is illegal and punishable by up to 10 years in prison for a private individual to sell or transfer a firearm while “knowing” or having “reasonable cause to believe” that the recipient falls into one of the prohibited categories above.[89] [90]
* Some states such as California require background checks for all firearms transactions, including those conducted between private individuals.[91] [92] [93]

Note that is the law today. No new regulations are needed on firearms restrictions. Every state has other laws not listed there. Many localities have even more restrictions.

More vindication that if you want protection, then you yourself have to be the first line of defense. Not the Broward County Sheriff's Dept. for certain. My first instincts were right about this dude as the first rule of leadership is that you take complete responsibility for all of the fuck-ups of those under your command and more importantly you fix the problems before they occur. This guy brags like Trump and acts like Clinton:

@Riggerjack
It's illegal to "knowingly" sell to prohibited individuals, but I wonder if there is a way to make it the responsibility of the seller to know.

As campitor said, requiring background checks at the state level can work, if you are concerned about that. If you read my link, it shows:

* A 2004 study of state prisoners who possessed guns during crimes for which they were jailed found that the guns were obtained from the following sources:

40.0% through an illegal/street source
37.4% through family or friends
7.3% at a retail store
2.6% at a pawnshop
0.8% at a gun show
0.6% at a flea market.[122]
* A study of crimes committed with firearms in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 2008 showed that 18% of the perpetrators lawfully owned the gun, and 79% were not legal gun owners.[123]

So 77.4% bypassed background checks by finding someone willing to risk a 10 year sentence, 9.9% went through the background check, and 1.4% went through gun shows and flee markets. The last 1.4%, some went through checks, some didn't.

As much noise as we hear about the gun show loophole, you would assume all guns used by criminals come through there, not 0.8%. In Washington state, the organization that runs our main guns shows, Washington Arms Collectors, has required a background check for membership, and at renewal each year. Selling a firearm to a non-member is punished by a lifetime ban from the club, no appeal.

See, these guys are gun nuts, and nobody is more serious about keeping guns out of the hands of criminals. I have been to gun shows in a few states, and while many will allow you in with no background check, none would allow purchase without one. Yeah, the state may not require it, but once background checks became easy and fast, (Brady bill 94, thanks grabbers) gun show promoters were quick to provide them. All pawnshops that buy or sell firearms will have an FFL, and do background checks.

Of course, now we (Washington state) have a required background check for private purchases. Which is a bit of a pain in the butt. The only guys I'm interested in buying guns from are guys I know, and have known for decades. But if I want to buy a gun from a friend, I have to meet him at an FFL with the gun. Conduct the paperwork, pay the fee, ($15 last time plus 10% sales tax) come back 3 days later and pick up the gun. If I pass the background check. I have so far.

I get it, you think tougher rules will slow down these scary shootings. I assume you just don't know how many rules are already out there, and that is why you are suggesting solutions that have already been implimented.

The guys shooting up schools are young, angry, outsiders. They haven't been through our justice system, or they would have real grievances. How do you filter for these guys? Most have no record, and no mental health history that would throw up flags.

The guy in FL was voted most likely to shoot up a school. Think about that. We know how to spot these guys. It was done in advance, by kids. And there were 39 referrals to law enforcement about this guy. Maybe, if we really cared about this issue, we would follow up on that.

But I expect we will ignore that, and focus on the super scary stuff like gun show loopholes and black guns.

Good point. And I would like to point out just how effective out-lawing drugs has been, as a drug prevention measure.

As to smaller schools, that was my first thought. In the smaller schools that I attended, there was far less social stratification. But the cruelty was just as present. I remember one kid got cornered, stripped, stuffed folded into a trash can, and walked out to the fifty yardline during half-time, where he was left, struggling to knock over the trashcan, crawl out, and walk off the field, carrying the can. He was a decent guy, but he had been the dedicated subject of bullying, from the same bullies, since elementary school. He's one of the people who graduated and never looked back, so I don't know what happened to him.

I think of him when I think of school shootings. He never did anything to give the impression that he would, but just all the crap he went through, that never stopped, that came from the same people, year after year. I had it rough as a kid, but I at least knew every shitty situation was temporary. No matter how bad, it would be different in a few months or a year. Now that the school shooting template is out there, I don't know how to stop kids dealing with this kind of regular abuse at school from choosing it.

It would be nice to think antibullying measures would fix this, but the evidence points the other way.

Since I can't see a way to separate the bullied kids from the guns, I think our best hope lies in stopping the abuse in school. But that would require throwing out the industrial schooling model, and starting fresh.

Which is just so much more work, than just calling for a gun bans, and going back to watching TV.

There are things you can quibble with, but overall probably one of the more objective looks. I have not read it all. The overall conclusion seems unsatisfying but not too surprising: It's hard to identify the effect of various gun-control laws due to limited data and poor methods. The effect everyone pays the most attention to, mass shootings, is particularly inconclusive.

We talk about F you money here, a lot. But why? It's not going to be enough to retire on, and it won't stop your retirement savings from tanking with the markets, it makes you more vulnerable to fraud and theft and liability to have ready cash, so surely f you money is a net loss, right? No. Having f you money changes one's relationship with your work. Having that bit of savings, means not automatically accepting whatever your boss offers. Not coming in for an extra shift when they just expect you to. Not taking the pay cut, or whatever your issue is with work. It gives you the freedom to reject the expectation of compliance, and going your own way. It empowers you to choose to accept those conditions, as well. But the choice is yours. Even if you don't exercise the option, it's better to have it. Having that option changes your relationship with your employer, and coworkers.

And when someone looks at the world, for what it is, and decides that some parts are to be avoided, and makes the plans, decisions, and preparations necessary to exclude those factors, this is equally empowering.

You can do this with martial arts, building a safe room, training with a gun, or what have you. Look at the advice in this thread. Plenty about gun choice, but just as much about influencing factors and why one should make this or that choice. Nobody is recommending going out and getting a gun so you can blast away at a bump in the night. No, the advice is to match the gun to the need and the environment. To be safe, to get it right.

I don't come from safe, middle class neighborhoods. I have seen plenty of violence, but little gun violence. For me, growing up, I just knew I wanted a different life, and in my twenties, I got it. I was out, and living in those safe neighborhoods, and that was good enough for a while. Right up until I heard someone coming in through the sliding glass door, as I described in the guns thread. It was a false alarm, but it was definitely an alarm. It got me thinking about the people I knew growing up, and what they did to people like me, now. This is what got me going on security.

And I found that having a gun, having looked at security, having made the decision to exclude parts of the world from my life, changed my relationship with the world. A similar change to the "f you money" effect I described above. Bad things still happen, but there are now limits. I feel backstopped. I don't control everything, but I can stop some things, close to me.

I have my little space, where I exercise both authority and responsibility. A place where I decide what doesn't belong. A place where I can determine what matters, and what doesn't. And just as importantly, having that space, let's me let others do as they wish outside of that space. And that is what I am endorsing, when I talk about guns.

But I thought it belonged here.

And I thought I have talked a lot about gun control, and the effects of the same, but I haven't talked about emotions much. The above is how I deal with the bad things in the world.

I can't make violence go away. I can't force people to be good or nice. All I can do is stake out my little corner, and declare, if only to myself, "that won't happen here." But it's not enough to whisper it in the dark under the blankets, like a child. For me, it's the start of looking at possibilities, probabilities, and capabilities, and coming up with contingency plans.

Because I'm a slow thinker. When presented with a situation I haven't expected and explored mentally, I have too many potentials, and I haven't worked out the best course. This causes me to slow down, look more, think more. Exactly the wrong response to a hazardous, quickly developing, situation. So part of staking out my corner is pre-planning for bad things. How to respond, where to go, what to do. Getting the right things in the right places to deal with the problem.

Now I know that crime on my island paradise is about as common as it is in gated private communities with staff security on the mainland. There just isn't much, and not much to do to prevent what little there is. The local rag can milk a murder for years. I've done all the passive crime prevention I can.

But it's not enough. I need a plan for me and mine, because when things change, is the wrong time to plan for changes. Firearms, for me, is part of that. They are part of the plan because they are the most effective deterrent to someone else using them. Not a great defense, but then the threat isn't ever present, either.

This is how I deal with a suboptimal world. What's the other option? Hope? Banding together and pretending the world is better than it is? Honestly, I just don't understand the thought process of looking at a world that includes violence, and deciding not to do anything about it. Maybe people who are less familiar with violence are just better about not thinking about it. I don't know.

So, for those who do something else, what do you do? How do you think? What is your plan?

Maybe I should invest in whoever makes safety scissors eh? It seems like we will all be headed back to kindergarten soon. All kidding aside, I hope you can see, this is one slippery slope with a dystopian hell at the bottom of it.

I'll take the chance of a mass shooting any day over the possibility of .gov trying to take away my kitchen knives because of the actions of a few psychopaths. The crazy people will always be there, and if you take away their toys, they will simply find new and creative ways to kill you, like IEDs, or big trucks.

We have massive inequality, toxic identity politics, and very weak social and cultural cohesion, and idiots want to blame an inanimate tool for all the woes of the world. Maybe, just maybe, we should look at those issues instead of trying to ban everything from guns to frying pans. Unless of course, there is an ulterior motive here? Nah couldn't be...